Bank spokeswoman Josianne Menard did not encourage the practice, however.

“The Bank of Canada feels that writing and markings on bank notes are inappropriate as they are a symbol of our country and a source of national pride,” Menard told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in an email…

Last week, a story about GMO corn killing millions of bees in Canada went viral. Only one small oversight, the title was misleading and the event was two years old. With the pesticide pushers regularly spreading misinformation, it’s important that we get our facts straight. What is the current bee situation in Canada and who really is to blame?

In a recent article chronicling the demise of Canadian social democracy at the hands of the Harper Conservatives, Marianne Lenabat draws an important comparison: what the financial sector is to the United States, so are the extractive industries to Canada. The similarity isn’t just about the two sectors’ relative size or contribution to GDP, although it starts there. It’s about how each country’s respective darling industry has come to dictate government policy, even when the social harm they inflict far outweighs their economic benefits.

In both countries, the same platitudes are trotted out to justify the government’s helpless devotion: The industry is vital to the economic health of the nation. It leads the world in innovation. It creates the jobs we need to build communities of hard-working families.… Read the rest

Scientists in Ontario have found a fungus that deactivates the gene in harmful bacteria which makes them so resistant to antibiotics.

A soil sample from a national park in eastern Canada has produced a compound that appears to reverse antibiotic resistance in dangerous bacteria.

Scientists at McMaster University in Ontario discovered that the compound almost instantly turned off a gene in several harmful bacteria that makes them highly resistant to treatment with a class of antibiotics used to fight so-called superbug infections. The compound, called aspergillomarasmine A, or AMA, was extracted from a common fungus found in soil and mold.

Antibiotic resistance is a growing public-health threat. Common germs such as Escherichia coli, or E. coli, are becoming harder to treat because they increasingly don’t respond to antibiotics. Some two million people in the U.S. are infected each year by antibiotic-resistant bacteria and 23,000 die as a result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Bill 4 allows for industry (and others) to carry out ‘research’ in provincial parks related to pipelines, transmission lines, roads and other industrial activities that might require park land. It also reduces legal protection for smaller parks and enables film production in BC parks….

“Bill 4 seems to be premised on the idea park protection unreasonably constrains government and industry. That’s not consistent with the BC government’s claim that parks are a public trust, to be managed for the protection of BC’s natural environment, and the inspiration, use and enjoyment of [the public].

It’s as if they plucked this straight out of people’s fondest dreams and turned it into a reality. From Canada’s CBC News:

A Vancouver pizzeria is serving up slices with an extra special ingredient — if you’re over 18 and have been prescribed marijuana by a doctor.

Anthony Risling explains that at Mega iLL, on Kingsway at Fraser, you can ask the kitchen to add their special ingredient for an extra $10. “Basically we infuse it through an oil extraction process, where we drizzle the oil onto the pizza and it medicates you when you eat it. It’s a little different effect from smoking it. It takes maybe about a half hour for it to activate.”

One customer at Mega iLL [said] the added oil has “a little bit of a tangy flavour”.

Risling aid the idea came from a trip to Cambodia, where a pizzeria called Happy Pizza used a similar process to add THC to the pies.

Hopefully the answer will be uncovered before residents’ grip on sanity reaches the breaking point. Via CBC News:

A federally funded report on the Windsor Hum has been submitted to both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Natural Resources Canada. For years, residents in west Windsor and neighbouring LaSalle have been complaining of a mysterious rumble or hum.

Both ministries are reviewing the results of the $60,000 report, said the University of Windsor’s Colin Novak, one of the authors of the report. The final review has not yet been conducted.

Officials are trying to arrange a meeting between the ministries and researchers, including Novak and the University of Western Ontario’s Peter Brown.

In 2012, a different federal study suggested the hum may originate from the U.S. side of the Detroit River, in the general area of Zug Island, an area of concentrated steel production and manufacturing.

Scientists think that they may have uncovered a vital evolutionary link between ocean-dwelling fish and their land-dwelling descendents in the form of Tiktaalik roseae. By the description, I think it’ll make a fine candidate for the SyFy monster movie of the week.

Scientists investigated fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish known as Tiktaalik roseae, discovered in 2004 in northern Canada’s Ellesmere Island. Possessing a broad flat head and sharp teeth, Tiktaalik resembled a cross between a fish and a crocodile, growing to a length of 9 feet (2.7 meters) as it hunted for prey in shallow freshwater.